


Time Well Spent

by thedreamerdelta



Series: let your heart win [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ambiguous Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Declarations Of Love, F/M, Gender-Neutral Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Intimately Lewd Hand-Holding, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Oneshot, Other, POV Second Person, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, ridiculous amounts of emotion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:54:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28162752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedreamerdelta/pseuds/thedreamerdelta
Summary: **5.3 spoilers**(g’raha tia’s been asleep within the crystal tower for years. you wake him up and his body tries to compensate, all at once)A oneshot companion heatfic sequel to “you shine brighter”.(as requested by y’all lovely people - thanks!)
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Series: let your heart win [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2063199
Comments: 16
Kudos: 88
Collections: Heat Wave





	Time Well Spent

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t let me fall asleep  
> (cause I fear I might break)

_ Please let this work. _

Twelve,  _ please _ let this work.

The red-and-white auracite glowed brightly with the light of a soular sun, just like the other crystal vessels had, but the pressure for this one to work seemed somehow so much more intense. 

Not simply because hundreds of years of countless memories and infinite skill and boundless patience were wrapped up inside a neatly-packed box of Allagan legacy once called the Crystal Exarch. 

But because it was  _ G’raha. _ G’raha Tia, whom you cared for so deeply, so powerfully you felt like your heart would burst with the swell of emotion whenever you had met his eyes, and with every ilm of crystal that had overtaken him your own froze just that little more in mirrored, hardened reponse.

If you hadn’t promised him - but you had, and so you took his soul on a journey throughout Norvrandt, stepping lightly throughout the realm with cargo more precious than you had ever before carried, to fulfill one last promise - 

( _ please, _ let it not have been your  _ last, _ you begged to whoever was listening)

\- and now here you were, ready to usher him on unto the next, and wherever the course of history took you both, you promised to all the gods you knew that you wanted to meet it  _ together  _ with a smile on your face - and you would. This you swore, did you not: to journey with him and take to the skies upon the eternal wind, from the skies of Dravania, to the sands of Thanalan, to the shores of La Noscea, even to the battlefields of Ala Mhigo and beyond.

If he would  _ only. _ Wake. Up.

You watched as the stream of light slowed, dimmed, and faded - and you sat there and waited.

And waited.

Waited.

The rush of blood throughout your veins thrummed in your ears, its pounding like a drumbeat that drowned out everything else save for your own beating heart.

You fought to keep your attention on the slumbering prince of Allag, watching for the slightest hint of movement, not even daring to consider what might happen if-

No. You wouldn’t consider it. 

You won’t.

  
  


And then, as if fate itself finally grew tired of playing with you, the color returned to his cheeks and he sat up with the gasp of life renewed.

You tried to dam the tide of your tears, not wanting to miss a single fraction of a second and knowing they would blur your vision, but they came rushing through anyway.

He rubbed his eyes, examined his hands - both of them spoken - and carded them through his crimson hair, its unbound length a testament to the time trapped within. 

_ What did he remember? _

_ Who did you awaken? _

_ The boy of years past, or the Exarch of futures rewritten? _

“Good morning, G’raha Tia,” you dared to utter into the silence.

His voice hitched.

“...Tis truly good to be awake once more, my friend.”

He turned to you and you met his eyes of crimson equal to your own in their joyful, watery smile.

Unable to hold yourself back any longer, you reach out to him and touch his wrist - and he hisses, as if burned, and latches onto your hand with a hot, trembling vice-like grip.

“Are you alright?” you exclaim, infinitely worried as his deep flush seems to only get worse. You raise your other hand to feel his forehead and he leans into your touch as if seeking relief. 

“I- gods-” he wheezes out unsteadily.

He is panting now, and your stomach clenches as you realize that no, something is  _ not  _ quite right - and you don’t have the slightest inkling of what you’ve done wrong. Whether it was something in the process of memory transfer itself, or maybe you jostled his soul vessel a little too harshly on the long way back from Rak’tika- oh, you  _ knew _ you shouldn’t have kept it in your coat pocket, you berated yourself as tears continued to leak out of the corner of your eyes, but you couldn’t bear to have him any further than absolutely necessary from your heart-

G’raha sees you starting to panic and shakes his head, trembling as he reaches up to brush the tears off your cheeks. 

“All is well,” he tries to shakily reassure you, but you know something still feels off. “I must- ah-!” He gasps as you sit next to him, and as your thigh presses against his nearly bare own you feel such scorching heat, as if a blazing inferno rages beneath his very skin.

“G’raha,” you begin. “you know very well I can sense that something is wrong. Why won’t you tell me?” He looks away, cheeks flushed more heavily than you remember ever seeing him, but remains quiet. “Please?”

Fine, you think as the silence stretches on, the miqo’te before you uncharacteristically unwilling to speak. You have a few cards of your own hidden up your sleeve that you can yet draw from.

You lean into him and whisper with a sad smile, “I thought we were past hiding things from each other, Exarch.”

His voice catches on a sob as you reach through the soft curtains of his hair to cup his cheek, and you know you have him.

“I- my warrior, my  _ friend _ \- Do not make me-” He shutters his gaze and breaks off, gasping and shaking his head, but it cannot go far - you keep his chin held firmly within your grasp. “I do not wish to push you away, far from it, but- I should  _ not  _ ask this of you. I  _ mustn’t.” _

“Whatever it is, what has you so sure that I would not be  _ willing?” _ you ask. His intense eyes fly open to widen comically in shock, and his hand tightens on your own so sharply as to be painful as he looks up at you, trying to find any modicum of jest on your end. He does not find it. You press your advantage. “G’raha, you seem positively convinced that I would refuse, but you’ve hardly given me the chance to answer a question I do not know.”

He sighs, defeated.

“I fear - I pray that you do not think too less of me, my friend,” he says as he finally pulls his hands free of you and examines them once more, seemingly unable to look you in the eye as he spills his secret, “for falling prey in your presence to biological whims of the flesh.”

Biological -  _ oh. _

Were he not so morose about the whole situation, you would have laughed. 

Was that  _ all? _

“The tower - forever attuned to its duty - had been suppressing them throughout my slumber, but-” He looks up at you, shrugging hopelessly. “A fundamental instinct, made to manifest in times both past and future, and now present. A tale told throughout the ages, meant to assure and explain, and yet - here and now, I find myself less than assured, truth be told, and the explanation thereof defies reality in its rather less-than-helpful simplicity.”

“I must confess to some confusion,” you say, encroaching upon his space even further, “for have you or have you not already assisted me with a similar... _ dilemma, _ G’raha Tia?” 

He falls to his back as you straddle him, and as your hips brush his groin he lets out such a noise you have  _ never _ heard him make as G’raha  _ or  _ the Exarch, more of a plaintive whine than a groan - yet clear in its source of intent.

“Yes, shortly after our battle at Holminster Switch, was it not? I am  _ quite  _ sure I remember such an event occuring, and yet here you are - for  _ whatever  _ reason - still unsure if I would help you with the same.” You scoot backwards towards his legs to give yourself room and begin to feel for the catch of thread belying the entrance to the prize you sought. “Do you truly believe me to be so uncaring, or unsympathetic? Unaffected by the course of history we shared? The battles we wrought and won?” 

“N-no,” he pants, flushed and touch-starved skin nearly stimulated to excess by your faintly fumbling hands, “never - but an agreement made once then and there does not make for an agreement renewed moreover now and here, surely.”

You falter, one hand in the midst of undoing the fastening of his trousers and look to his face, scrutinizing, to decipher whatever emotions you could find beyond his flushed cheeks. “You...  _ would _ like my assistance, yes?” you ask hesitantly.

Had you read everything wrong?

But no, he nods in assent - carefully, disbelievingly, but nods nonetheless.

“I n-never presumed-  _ ah~!” _ he cries out mid-sentence as you lightly stroke at him through his thin layers. “That y-you would want, to- to-  _ oh gods-” _

You undo the last string that held his pants on, and after sliding both of his lower layers off at once, you glance up mischievously before taking as much of the thick length of him in your mouth at once as you can and he loses entirely what little of his usually-indomitable composure that remains, babbling incoherent whimpers to the cavernous crystal ceiling above. He is warm, a comfortable slide against your tongue, though as you dive deeper you struggle to fit yourself around the entirety of its rather bulky circumference as it cuts off your air. Your eyes leak tears for other reasons, now, as he can not help but buck his hips further into the warm confines of your mouth and you gag but keep him inside for as long as you can before backing off slightly to cough and catch your breath. 

“My- mine apologies,” he says as he see you wiping your face. You shake your head. 

“Nothing you ought to be sorry for,” you say with a sly smile. “Well, maybe for trying to hide  _ this-“ _

He keens as your hand wraps around him once more.

“-from me. How  _ would  _ you have possibly gone on with your day, I wonder…” Musing thoughtfully, you pump him slowly with an uncaring air as he grasps at his thighs, uncut nails grown by time and solitude leaving beautiful red trails against his skin as he wills himself with every remaining fibre of his being to not thrash and buck you off. “Maybe to visit Krile, subject yourself to her ire instead-” 

He gives you a disgruntled, petulant glare, cutting your sentence off midthought. 

“Could- could you perchance  _ not  _ mention Krile while you have  _ ah~ _ your hands on my cock-  _ nn~“ _

You chuckle and continue to work him, enjoying the noises he makes, the flush that has made its way down from his face to his beautifully lithe body, the corded tensing of his arms. “Maybe I’m just jealous.”

“Whatever for?” he asks, bewildered despite your attentions. You let go of his length and he sharply inhales, tensing to prepare himself for whatever you had in mind for him next.

“Well,” you say, crawling forward. “For one, apparently  _ she _ gets to call you by  _ Raha _ \-  _ oof-“ _

At the sound of his name, unadorned by neither title nor tribe, his eyes widen and like a flash your positions are suddenly reversed - he is bent over you in all his glory, curtains of hair falling over his shoulders onto you. It is all he can do to keep himself from spilling as he enters you at last, sensitive to the bone and overwhelmed by emotion and sensation to boot.

“You’ve had that, you’ve always,  _ always  _ had that,” the last of the Allagan line babbles out, driving into you with the unrelenting force of a man who has waited over 100 years to sacrifice himself for you on another world only to find he now has an inexplicable blessed nigh-eternity to spend with you and rewrite history itself. “Say it- that- again, please, I-” he breaks off and shudders to a halt, buckling with the effort of keeping himself upright on muscles that had not exerted any effort for far too long.

What else can you do but give him what he asks? 

With all the muscle gained from your adventures, you carefully return him to his previous position on his back, and as you sweetly stroke his soft hair all he can muster is the strength to look up at you in adoration. 

Reaching for his hand, you bring it to your lips before intertwining his fingers with your own as you sink back onto him.

“I love you, Raha,” you whisper gently and ride him through his feverish heat as much as you can, until you both find you can take no more of neither pleasure nor exertion without starting to doze off then and there.

Yet even after you are both spent, even after it all, he still seems tense.

“I find myself unwilling to fall asleep,” he admits quietly when you ask. “There was never need for such in the First, tied to the tower as I was - and the omnipresent light besides. Now that I am merely spoken once more, however…” He trails off and looks to the gleam of crystal surrounding you. “I can not help but fear that if I were to once more slumber-” 

“-that you’d not wake up for another hundred years?” you finish softly. He closes his eyes and nods solemnly, gripping your hand tightly as if to reassure himself of your presence.

“I  _ will  _ be here,” you emphatically say. “I will be here when you wake up, every single  _ day  _ if that’s what it takes. For the rest of my life - our lives, if you’ll have me. And even should we be parted - I promise to do everything in my power to come back to you.”

“I- nothing would make me happier,” he says, nearly disbelieving and still unwilling to let himself hope even after everything the two of you have been through. “You surely have more important things to be spending your time on...” 

Shaking your head, you kiss his brow and close your eyes, as if by doing so you could narrow the world down to just the two of you. “If it’s with you, Raha, it would be time well spent.”

**Author's Note:**

> Whew. _Well._ That was a thing.
> 
> If you liked this or any other works in our Heat Wave collection, please consider joining our very lovely [wholesomely debauched discord family](https://discord.gg/enabling-debauched-xivfic) and, as always, your comments and kudos mean the world. So- thanks!


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